Okudzeto translated for General Mosquito and company

For people who claim to democratically represent Ghana among the global comity of nations, it is more than laughable to hear the General-Secretary of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) call for the immediate arrest of Mr. Sam Okudzeto, simply because the former President of the Ghana Bar Association (GBA) has dared to caution President John Dramani Mahama against any injudicious attempt to pardon the members of the infamous Montie Three Gang who were recently convicted and sentenced to 4 months’ imprisonment, for threatening the lives of at least five Supreme Court judges

(See “NDC Wants Okudzeto Arrested for ‘Threatening’ Mahama” Classfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 8/2/16).

What Mr. Okudzeto clearly meant when he said that President Mahama “would be planning his own funeral if he gave in to the pressure mounting on him to grant a presidential pardon to the three Montie-Fm contemnors, namely, Messrs. Salifu Maase (aka Mugabe), Alistair Tairo Nelson and Godwin Ako Gunn, was simply that any reckless misapplication of the powers of “Mercy” or “Pardon” granted any sitting president of our Republic under Article 72 of the 1992 Constitution, is almost certain to cost Mr. Mahama the 2016 presidential election. For literal-minded party hacks like Messrs. Asiedu-Nketia, Adams, Anyidoho and Portuphy, this most constructive advice to the president was tantamount to Mr. Okudzeto’s calling for either the assassination of Mr. Mahama or an all-out civil strife of Rwandan proportions.

It mightily appears that somebody possessed of remarkable cognitive gravitas has translated Mr. Okudzeto’s elderly admonishment to the NDC Abongo Boys because as of this writing, another news report had appeared online in which the NDC apparatchiks were quoted to have vehemently denied ever calling for the arrest and prosecution of the renowned and well-respected lawyer.

With such pathologically literal-minded people in charge of the affairs of our country, there is no doubt that this is the most dangerous time for any well-cultivated intellectual and/or scholar to be living in Ghana.

Even more disturbing is the fact that so morbidly partisan has Ghanaian politics become that the leaders of the National Democratic Congress appear to be having an extremely hard time in coming to grips with the fact that hateful speech of the kind that is widely alleged to have been deployed by the members of the Montie Three Gang against the members of the Wood Supreme Court, is not constitutionally protected anywhere in the civilized democratic world.

For those of our readers who have not been following the subject of this column, the Montie Three Gang, consisting of a radio talk-show host and his two regular panelists, is reported to have threatened Chief Justice Georgina Theodora Wood with sexual violation and summary liquidation if the Ramadan-Nimako cause célèbre was not decided in favor of the so-called Independent Electoral Commission (EC), and by extension the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress.

The Ramadan-Nimako case regards a Supreme Court order for the EC to delete the names of all voters on the national voters’ register who registered to vote in the lead-up to the 2012 general election by the use of the recently proscribed National Health Insurance Scheme-issued ID cards.

The Apex Court has determined that the NHIS cards are not an authentic means of ascertaining one’s Ghanaian identity and citizenship, because the issuance of these health cards was not exclusively predicated on one’s Ghanaian identity or citizenship but mere residency.

The cards were issued by the erstwhile Kufuor-led New Patriotic Party government as part of its policy agenda of ensuring universal access to healthcare by all Ghanaian citizens and residents. Mrs. Charlotte Kesson-Smith Osei, the chairwoman of the EC, has been stonewalling the Apex Court’s order because she imperiously claims that proscribing the NHIS cards would disenfranchise the overwhelming majority of eligible Ghanaian voters.

As part of its strategic efforts to undermining the credibility of the court-of-last-resort, we are told that Montie-Fm Radio was established by some NDC stalwarts in a bid to launching a blistering psychological warfare against any members of the Supreme Court perceived by the leaders of the ruling party to be thwarting the dogged determination of the Mahama Posse to perennially entrench itself in the post-PNDC revolutionary era.

Which may be clearly seen to explain why Mahama cabinet appointees like Foreign Minister Hanna Tetteh; Gender, Children and Social Protection Minister Nana Oye Lithur; and Education Minister and former Cape Coast University Vice-Chancellor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyeman, would lead the signature-petition drive to having the conviction and prison sentencing of the Montie Three nullified by President Mahama.